> Moloch has been used figuratively in English literature from John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) to Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (1955), to refer to a person or thing demanding or requiring a very costly sacrifice.

I mean a project called Zeus would hardly founder on it's namesakes fetish for turning into a bull and assaulting human women.

Software should be cold, calculated and cannibalistic.

Leave cuteness to the experts: puppies and such.

E.g big cities might get referred to as molochs the way they eat into nature around it or suck people into its anonymity

For me at least, because of the city-context, Moloch matches: The moloch could stand for the amount of activity in a system that is humanly insurmountable to get a better-than-superficial understanding of.

I didn't have that strong of an association of Moloch with big cities as it felt like when I looked it up for the above answer, so I googled a bit of its usage on news sites and it looks like in Germany it is almost exclusively used for big cities, whereas in Switzerland, cities is the most common usage but it is applied way more liberally.

Within a minute or so I saw it used to refer to: The EU, a government bicycle program, a 2km long tunnel in Zürich, iTunes, the Tour de France, Goldman Sachs and fashion.

Moloch isn't the good guy in Howl.

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch the meddling micromanager from Maine!

Moloch the Junior Architect!

Moloch the 3-space indenter!

At least Moloch isn't real.

That said, I totally respect the project's decision to name it so. I'm sorry if it comes off as an outrage or an unnecessary rant. I understand it takes away the energy which is otherwise better spent on a constructive discussion of this excellent project, which is also surprisingly well-maintained. But, I hope you realise why the name is controversial, especially since everyone that has to use the project has to get used to seeing/reading/using/typing Moloch everywhere from the docs, to the CLI, to the FAQ pages, and what-not.

May be the project can explain their rationale in a separate webpage (if they want to) and that might help?

Profoundly and deeply unsavory.

Your life must be easy.

I won't speculate on whatever led you to such fatuous conclusions, because ad hominem is a bad reasoning.

Makes more sense.